“You never forget your first "faggot." Because the memory, in its way, makes you. It becomes a spine for the body of anxieties and insecurities that will follow, something to hang all that meat on. Before you were just scrawny; now you're scrawny because you're a faggot. Before you were just bookish; now you're bookish because you're a faggot.”
Source: How We Fight For Our Lives
“All down the years, words have been going around like pieces of shit, only to get stuck on a truck bumper with up-yours pride. Rednecks, moonshiners, ridge runners, hicks. Deplorables.”
Source: Demon Copperhead
“Finally, I found that as a result of my abusive childhood I had developed the ability to deny my feeling, intuitive self. As a child this ability kept me alive. I was powerless, small & inexperienced. It was critical that I behave according to expectations--that I not resist my father's violence, that I cast my eyes downward in a posture of guilt, & that I accept my elders' view of reality...My childhood patterns fed into the mounting abuse--it did NOT cause it. This pattern does not make me responsible for Amy's violent & abusive behavior.”
“I closed my eyes and wished the way I felt in that moment, lucky and loved, could last forever.”
Source: Enemy: A True Story of Courage, Childhood Trauma and the Cost of War
“That they had seen it, and not tried to stop it, made me wonder if they too thought I deserved to be treated that way. Long after they had gone I felt their eyes on me as hot as a brand, burning the shame of exposure deep into my skin.”
Source: Enemy: A True Story of Courage, Childhood Trauma and the Cost of War
“Though I was sure she’d never noticed it, I had spent my whole life doing what I could to protect her. I didn’t know if she could survive without me. I didn’t know who I would be if she no longer needed me to stand guard.”
Source: Enemy: A True Story of Courage, Childhood Trauma and the Cost of War
“Love is the nature of the soul and when you truly love with all your heart and soul it brings you the most beautiful feeling of life.”
“It felt like someone had waved a magic wand over my life, wiping out the mother I had known
before. I wasn’t sure which one was the dream – the person she had been when Dad was living
with us, or the one she was now.”
Source: Enemy: A True Story of Courage, Childhood Trauma and the Cost of War
“He drained her of self worth: death by a thousand cuts. Snide little comments, rolling eyes and always that tone in his voice, the one that told her how worthless she was.”
Source: Enemy: A True Story of Courage, Childhood Trauma and the Cost of War
“I felt my throat ache and knew it was her sadness I swallowed down”
Source: Enemy: A True Story of Courage, Childhood Trauma and the Cost of War